Artist Mike Winterbauer, who now has several successful art-driven Kickstarters under his belt, is in the midst of a new campaign for the work he did on Powerblade. The original Nintendo game Powerblade box features a futuristic dude wearing sunglasses in a tank top while holding a gigantic power blade. Until this point, I had no idea that Mr. Winterbauer was the actual power blade guy! He posed for the scene in 1991 and then painted it accordingly for the box cover. I never played the game itself, but I do very much remember it on store shelves in the early '90s. For any fans of the game out there, a handful of cool prints will be available in a similar fashion to his Wing Commander portfolio project. You can learn more and back the campaign here.

This Kickstarter is raising funds to create awesome collectible prints for the iconic NES game Power Blade and show the process of repainting the cover. I will be actually recreating my classic Power Blade painting for this KickStarter! At each stage of this painting I will be showing and explaining the creative process. This is a wonderful opportunity to see how classic traditional cover art is created.

The cover of Power Blade is actually a portrait of myself. It is not every day that you get your portrait on the cover of a Classic Nintendo game.

I was very excited when I was asked to paint a cover for the Power Blade game that had a Terminator feel to it. I am a huge fan of the movie and of Arnold. This was a challenge to come up with a cover that felt like Terminator but was original material. I needed to portray the main character from the game Nova holding his cool boomerang in a futuristic environment that felt like Terminator. I realized that I would need original reference to paint from and I always took my own photos to use as reference. So I set up a photoshoot that had a Terminator feel to it, which really is all about attitude.